Roche Group is a pharmaceuticals and diagnostics company that operates in over 100 countries and employs more than 94,000 people worldwide. With a rapidly changing business environment demanding more flexibility across systems and processes, the company’s leaders decided to launch a strategically important transformation in HR. Read our interview with Margaret Greenleaf, head of group HR strategic initiatives at Roche.
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, pharmaceuticals and diagnostics companyRocheis focused on advancing science to improve people’s lives. The Roche Group operates in over 100 countries and employs more than 94,000 people worldwide. With a rapidly changing business environment demanding more flexibility across systems and processes, the company’s leaders decided to launch a strategically important transformation in the HR space. Margaret Greenleaf, head of group HR strategic initiatives at Roche, spoke to me about the project and the organisation’s future HR management plans.
Employees are spread across the globe, with large, mid-sized, and small affiliates in every region. In the past, we dictated the timing and templates for our global HR processes centrally. We sent guidance to the affiliates about when to implement processes, where to capture data, and how to enter it into what system. But we realized this does not empower leaders, nor does it account for the variety of business needs and requirements across Roche. We want to help our managers and leaders to be able to decide what is important and what to focus on—this means a change in the way we approach HR.
I think most organisations would point to similar challenges. These include getting complete, accurate data from legacy systems on a timely basis, thinking about how we work across multiple teams and locations, understanding the role HR plays in transforming culture, and setting expectations and building accountability in HR and in our managers. That also includes reinforcing and embedding change, which is becoming increasingly important.
We took a decision to transform our HR processes into people practices that are business-centric. At the same time, we had a vision for our HR IT landscape that would provide a tool that is designed around the way people work. That meant we wanted a system that was easy-to-use and intuitive, mobile, cloud-based, and that could provideanalytics-based insightsand an ongoing ability to drive simplification. On top of those requirements, it had to support our move to our new people practices.
“Workday is an accelerator for our cultural transformation, not just a system deployment.”
The deployment covered all global HR processes, including compensation, recruiting, talent and performance, reporting and data conversion, as well as employee life cycle events. Within our broader IT landscape, we required the implementation of middleware and integrations with legacy systems. And for the near term, we also required data maintenance to support local payroll, time management, and benefits across our biggest sites.
Workday is an accelerator for our cultural transformation, not just a system deployment. We are approaching our deployment differently by fully engaging with the organisation during all stages of the project, including the identification of the needs and design of the processes, as well as the system roll out. Ownership sits with the business—this is not an HR system deployment project. The process redesign and the configuration of Workday have been in response to business need. And the implementation is about transformation—in the way managers and employees interact, and the way managers and leaders lead their people. The introduction of Workday was one component of this transformation that has come towards the later stages.
We are now through the initial stages of deployment and can see where we have opportunities to continue to drive process simplification, behavioural change, and adoption. We see the benefits for employees having the ability to drive their own growth and development in new ways—through connections and greater transparency in Workday. And, as the data builds in our system, we anticipate managers and HR being able to increase their level of independence through dashboards with greater accessibility to HR data and real-time data management. We are also looking forward to our first round of compensation reviews in Workday.
Assess, understand, and explore Workday as much as possible before starting the journey.
They should also consider how ready HR is. The earlier the HR function is engaged, sees the system, and understands new ways of working, the better. If the deployment is global, then having local representation on the project team is absolutely key. I’d say it’s important to spend time ensuring design principles are understood and signed off by all key stakeholders. It will make design sign-off and decision-making faster in the long term. Finally, be agile and open to change, and ensure you set clear expectations across the business.
了解更多关于人力资源管理的转型,看这个on-demand webinar, which includes initial results and key insights fromRoche’s Workday deployment.
More Reading
Two Workday leaders—Cristina Goldt, general manager of workforce and pay for products developed for the office of the CHRO, and David Hudson, vice president of product management for Workday’s payroll products—share why organizations need to rethink their global payroll strategy and explain what organizations need to make the shift.
Nothing artificial about it—artificial intelligence is furthering advancements in HR technology, from improving efficiency to enhancing the employee experience. Discover how AI is reshaping HR and, in turn, how HR is putting AI to work.
Intelligent automation has become a critical factor in organizational strategy. Learn how natural language processing tools are already driving major efficiencies today.
